Land Value Taxation will solve many of the 21st century's most serious social, economic and environmental problems, and promote justice, fairness and sustainability. We CAN have a world in which all can prosper.

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Pages I refer to often

Progress and Poverty, by Henry GeorgeHere are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!

Books I Value

Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The RemedyThis is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.

Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Where Else Might You Look?

Wealth and WantThe URL comes from the subtitle to Progress & Poverty -- and the goal is widely shared prosperity in the 21st century. How do we get there from here? A roadmap and a reference source.

Reforming the Property Tax for the Common GoodI'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty. Let's start with the enabling legislation and state requirements for the property tax. There are opportunities for great good!

Notes

238 posts categorized "commons"

September 12, 2014

It appears that someone in Congress -- probably multiple someones -- feels that we're not giving away the Commons fast enough, and that the federal government ought to rely on other kinds of income rather than collecting the fair market rent on the land on which individually owned cottages sit within Forest Service lands, those rents ought to be reduced! They've asked the CBO to estimate the costs of this gifting.

A bit of calculating reveals that the owners of the 14,000 cottages are paying, on average, $2,142 in land rent annually, at 5% on older valuations of the land, suggesting that the average lot is currently valued at about $43,000 for land rent purposes. Interestingly, these are apparently longtime owners; average turnover is 400 per year, or 2.9%.

When we-the-people lower the rent below market value, what happens to the selling price of the homes? The selling prices go up. In other words, the leaseholders who want to sell can charge buyers more for the house. Aren't we nice to provide those homesellers such a gift?

Not only that, our gift is to be retroactive to the beginning of 2014, it appears!

They propose to cap the fees at $5,600, no matter what the updated valuation of the land might be. That is, no matter what the real value of the cabin's site might be, for land rent purposes, the impolite fiction would be that it is worth no more than $112,000. No matter what the view is, what the location is, how good the infrastructure is, what services the federal employees provide to keep the lot accessible. This sounds a bit like California's Proposition 13, which detaches property taxes from current valuations.

More typically, if a tenant gives up a lease, they are expected to remove their cottage from the lot and leave it clean for the next tenant. The landlord -- we the people -- shouldn't have to deal with abandoned cottages.

August 23, 2014

Why on earth would we-the-people sellassets such as this instead of leasingthem, producing an income that would benefit future generations??? That would be Natural Public Revenue.

The value of that acreage will rise over time. Why will that be private, or corporate, gain, rather than public gain??

U.S. Government Sells 400,000 Acres in Gulf

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AUG. 20, 2014

The federal government has sold more than 400,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast for oil and gas exploration and development, an official with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Wednesday. The acreage represents a small fraction of the 21.6 million acres the agency had offered as part of a five-year program to develop resources on the outer continental shelf. Offerings since 2012 in the western Gulf attracted buyers for about 60 million offshore acres, adding about $2.3 billion to the Treasury. Wednesday’s sales, if approved, will bring in about $110 million. BP submitted the largest number of high bids, winning 27 of the 81 tracts that sold. It was the first sale in the western Gulf for BP since it was barred from such auctions after the 2010 oil spill. Conoco Philips spent the most of the 93 bidders in the sale, paying about $61 million for a tract in the ultra-deep-water Alaminos Canyon area.

November 03, 2013

Interesting comments on a number of things, including doctors, slaves, soldiers, income inequality, sobriety, thrift, poverty,

Some excerpts:

Bad as we are, I believe that if we all understood how we are living,
and what we are doing daily, we should make a revolution before the end
of the week. But as we do not know; and as many of us, forseeing
unpleasant revelations, do not want to know; I can only assure you that I
am in perfect concord with standard economists when I state that
competition is the force that makes our industrial system self-acting.
It produces the effects which I have described without the conscious
contrivance or interference of either master on the one hand, or slave
on the other. It may be described as a seesaw, or lever of the first
order, having the fulcrum between the power and the weight.

and

The so-called right of private property is a convention that every man
should enjoy the product of his own labour, either to consume it or
exchange it for the equivalent product of his fellow labourer. But the
landlord and capitalist enjoy the product of the labour of others, which
they consume to the value of many millions sterling every year without
even a pretence of producing an equivalent. They daily violate the right to which they appeal when the socialist
attacks them. Nor is their inconsistency so obvious as might be
expected. If you violate a workman's right daily for centuries, and
daily respect the landlord's right, the workman's right will at last be
forgotten, whilst the landlord's right will appear more sacred as
successive years add to its antiquity. In this way the most illogical
distinctions come to be accepted as natural and inevitable. One man
enters a farmhouse secretly, helps himself to a share of the farm
produce, and leaves without giving the farmer an equivalent. We call him
a burglar, and send him to penal servitude. Another man does precisely
the same thing openly, has the impudence even to send a note to say when
he is coming, and repeats his foray twice a year, breaking forcibly
into the premises if his demand is not complied with. We call him a
landlord, respect him, and, if his freebooting extends over a large
district, make him deputy-lieutenant of the country or send him to
Parliament, to make laws to license his predatory habits.

September 28, 2013

One might be led to ask, how many is enough, and how we might go about encouraging our best and brightest into careers that serve others instead of rent-seeking. Two generations ago, many became doctors, engineers and teachers.

What changes in public policy will reduce the returns now funneled so generously to the rent-seekers, leaving more for the folks who labor in the productive sectors of the economy?

Why do we pay so little attention to rent-seeking?

Why is rent-seeking taught to our MBAs, but the impacts of rent-seeking not taught to our liberal arts, social sciences, political science, public policy students?

D'ya think that the rent-seekers might really really like it this way??

Too many of the our brightest people may be choosing careers in finance,
undertaking economically and socially useless — and even harmful —
activities, Robert Shiller, a Yale University economics professor,
writes in an article for Project Syndicate.

A
survey of elite U.S. universities showed that 25 percent of Harvard
graduating seniors, 24 percent of Yale graduating seniors and 46 percent
of Princeton graduating seniors were going into financial services in
2006, notes Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller home price index.

While those proportions have fallen more recently, he explains that might only be a temporary effect of the financial crisis.And
more are going into speculative fields like investment banking rather
than traditional finance such as lending, he says, citing a study by
Thomas Philippon of the Stern School of Business, New York University
and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia.

We
need some traders and speculators, Shiller concedes, as they provide
some useful service — sorting through information about businesses and
trying to judge their real worth.

"But these people's activities
also impose costs on the rest of us," he explains. Much of their
speculation and deal making is "pure rent-seeking."

"In
other words, it is wasteful activity that achieves nothing more than
enabling the collection of rents on items that might otherwise be free."

Those
working in speculative finance fields are like a feudal lord installing
a chain across a river to charge fees on passing boats, he argues.
Making no improvements to the river, the lord does nothing productive
and helps no one but himself. Few people will use the river if enough
lords put chains across it to collect fees.

Those
working in speculative fields, he says, "skim the best business deals,
creating a 'negative externality' on those who are not party to them."

For example, they can reject bad assets, such as subprime mortgage securities, offloading them to less knowledgeable investors.

The
repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which blocked commercial banks from
investment banking, allowed bankers to act more and more like those
feudal lords collecting fees.

"In fact, the main advantages of
the original Glass-Steagall Act," he says, "may have been more
sociological than technical, changing the business culture and
environment in subtle ways. By keeping the deal-making business
separate, banks may have focused more on their traditional core
business."

A paper by economists at Columbia University and Princeton published on the Social Science Research Network website
showed that over-the-counter (OTC) traders allowed informed dealers to
extract excessive rents and to undermine organized exchanges by
"cream-skimming" the best deals.

"The
informational rents in OTC markets in turn attract too much talent to
the financial industry, which would be more efficiently deployed as
real-sector entrepreneurs," the paper asserts.

Plus, OTC dealers'
rents tend to increase "as there are more informed dealers, because the
greater cream-skimming by dealers worsens the terms entrepreneurs can
get for their assets on the organized exchange, and therefore their
bargaining power on OTC markets."

January 22, 2013

"The Lord's Prayer says, Give us this day our daily bread. Our
daily bread comes from the land. No man made the land. It is God's
gift to mankind. It belongs to all men. Therefore individual
ownership of land is wrong. Individual control of the fruits of the
land is wrong."

January 08, 2013

The only point where I do not find myself in complete accord (and
that is perhaps more due to your comparative silence than anything
else) is that I attach relatively more importance to the initial
injustice done by the permitted monopoly of raw material in a few
hands. It seems to me that individualism, in order to be just, must
strive hard for an equalisation of original conditions by the
removal of all artificial advantages. The great reservoir of natural
wealth that we sum up as land (including mines, etc.) ought, it
seems to me, to be nationalised before we can say that the
individual is allowed fair play. While he is thwarted in obtaining
his fair share of the raw material, he is being put at a
disadvantage by artificial laws.

January 01, 2013

The soil was given to rich and poor in common. Wherefore, O ye
rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone?

—Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Great.

(See also March 11)

Hmmm. Googling this, it appears to be from St. Ambrose. (See December 21 for another):

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968).The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Voice of the Early Church. V.

By St. Ambrose

(Latin; 340?–397)

HOW far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? Why do you drive out the fellow sharers of nature, and claim it all for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and poor, in common. Why do you rich claim it as your exclusive right? The soil was given to the rich and poor in common—wherefore, oh, ye rich, do you unjustly claim it for yourselves alone? Nature gave all things in common for the use of all; usurpation created private rights. Property hath no rights. The earth is the Lord’s, and we are his offspring. The pagans hold earth as property. They do blaspheme God.

December 30, 2012

If, then, successive generations of men cannot have their fractional
share of the actual soil (including mines, etc.) how can the
division of the advantages of the natural earth be effected? By the
division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the rent of
the soil the common property of the nation. That is (as the taxation
is the common property of the State), by taking the whole of the
taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing all other
kinds of taxation whatever. And thus all industry would be
absolutely emancipated from every burden.

December 24, 2012

"Yes, ah yes, there is frightful misery in the world," answered
Gabriel tenderly and sadly. "Yes, many of the poor, cut off
from all joy, all hope, are cold and hungry and in want of shelter
and raiment, in the midst of the immense riches which the Creator
has provided, not for the happiness of a few, but for the happiness
of all, for his wish was that they should be equitably divided — but
a few have acquired the common inheritance by fraud and violence."

December 21, 2012

God has ordered all things to be produced, so that there should be
food in common to all, and that the earth should be a common
possession to all. Nature therefore has produced a common right for
all, but greed has made it a right for a few.

December 20, 2012

The ground was in common and no part of it was the permanent
property of any man in particular; yet whoever was in occupation of
any determined spot of it, for rest, for shade or the like, acquired
for the time a sort of ownership, from which it would have been
unjust and contrary to the law of nature to have driven him by
force; but the instant that he quitted the use or occupation of it
another might seize it without injustice.

November 28, 2012

He may, and often he does, engross the first necessity of labor,
land, and neither use it himself or allow anyone else to use it, and
though it is clear that . . . he is injuring the community, the law
is sternly on his side.

November 25, 2012

A sig-file on a listserv brought to my attention a quote from St. Ambrose, which, to my surprise, Ernest Crosbydidn't include in his Earth-for-All Calendar:

"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich."

22.
In the very first pages of Scripture we read these words: "Fill the
earth and subdue it."(19) This teaches us that the whole of creation is
for man, that he has been charged to give it meaning by his intelligent
activity, to complete and perfect it by his own efforts and to his own
advantage.

Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with
the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress, it follows
that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. The
recent Council reiterated this truth: "God intended the earth and
everything in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus,
under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created
goods should flow fairly to all." (20)

All other rights, whatever
they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be
subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in
fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation. Redirecting
these rights back to their original purpose must be regarded as an
important and urgent social duty.

The Use of Private Property

23.
"He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and
closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (21)
Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the
rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: "You
are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are
giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are
meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to
everyone, not to the rich." (22) These words indicate that the right to
private property is not absolute and unconditional.

No one may
appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others
lack the bare necessities of life. In short, "as the Fathers of the
Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private
property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good."
When "private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another,"
it is for the public authorities "to seek a solution to these
questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social
groups." (23)

The Common Good

24. If
certain landed estates impede the general prosperity because they are
extensive, unused or poorly used, or because they bring hardship to
peoples or are detrimental to the interests of the country, the common
good sometimes demands their expropriation.

Vatican II affirms
this emphatically. (24) At the same time it clearly teaches that income
thus derived is not for man's capricious use, and that the exclusive
pursuit of personal gain is prohibited. Consequently, it is not
permissible for citizens who have garnered sizeable income from the
resources and activities of their own nation to deposit a large portion
of their income in foreign countries for the sake of their own private
gain alone, taking no account of their country's interests; in doing
this, they clearly wrong their country. (25)

Those interested in Catholic Social Thought should look for a new book which came out of a 2007 conference held at the University of Scranton, and edited by Professor Kenneth R. Lord of UScranton, entitled "Two Views of Social Justice: A Catholic/Georgist Dialogue." The version I've seen is the October, 2012, issue of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, and I understand that it will be made available in other forms as well.

The abstract for the book:

Sixteen scholars have come together in this issue to examine eight social-justice themses from the perspectives of Catholic Social Thought and the philosophy of Henry George. The themes they address are natural law, human nature, the nature of work, the nineteenth-century papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, causes of war, immigration, development, and wealth, and neighborhood revitalization. While they sometimes wrangle with each other, their common aspiration is the same as their nineteenth-century predecessors,: to find solutions to the human suffering caused by injustice.

The use of a certain area of the earth's surface is a primary
condition of anything that man can do; it gives him room for his own
actions, with the enjoyment of the heat and the light, the air and
the rain which nature assigns to the area; and it determines
his distance from, and in a great measure his relations to, other
things and other persons. We shall find that it is this
property of "land" which, though as yet insufficient prominence has
been given to it, is the ultimate cause of the distinction which all
writers on economics are compelled to make between land and other
things.

October 22, 2012

The doctrine that land can become the private property of one is a
doctrine morally repugnant to the Bantu. The idea which is today
beginning to haunt Europe, that, as the one possible salve for our
social wounds and diseases, it might be well if the land should
become again the property of the nation at large, is no ideal to the
Bantu, but a realistic actuality. He finds it difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile his sense of justice with any other form of
tenure.

October 21, 2012

The accompanying map says, "Around Grand Central Terminal, towers could be up to twice the size now permitted. Development could also take place along the Park Avenue corridor, where towers could be more than 40% larger. Elsewhere in the district, towers could be 20% larger."

But
New York’s premier district, the 70-block area around Grand Central
Terminal, has lagged, Bloomberg officials say, hampered by zoning rules,
decades old, that have limited the height of buildings.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants
to overhaul these rules so that buildings in Midtown Manhattan can soar
as high as those elsewhere. New towers could eventually cast shadows
over landmarks across the area, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral and
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They could rise above the 59-story MetLife
Building and even the 77-story Chrysler Building.

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal reflects
his effort to put his stamp on the city well after his tenure ends in
December 2013. Moving swiftly, he wants the City Council to adopt the
new zoning, for what is being called Midtown East, by October 2013, with
the first permits for new buildings granted four years later.

His
administration says that without the changes, the neighborhood around
Grand Central will not retain its reputation as “the best business
address in the world” because 300 of its roughly 400 buildings are more
than 50 years old. These structures also lack the large column-free
spaces, tall ceilings and environmental features now sought by corporate
tenants.

The
rezoning — from 39th Street to 57th Street on the East Side — would
make it easier to demolish aging buildings in order to make way for
state of-the-art towers.

Without
it, “the top Class A tenants who have been attracted to the area in the
past would begin to look elsewhere for space,” the administration says
in its proposal.

The
plan has stirred criticism from some urban planners, community boards
and City Council members, who have contended that the mayor has acted
hastily. They said they were concerned about the impact of taller towers
in an already dense district where buildings, public spaces, streets,
sidewalks and subways have long remained unchanged.

Mr. Bloomberg has encouraged high-rise development in industrial neighborhoods, including the Far West Side of Manhattan,
the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and in Long Island City,
Queens. But with the proposal for Midtown, which is working its way
through environmental and public reviews, he is tackling the city’s
commercial heart.

“Unlocking
the development potential in this area will generate historic
opportunities for investment in New York City,” Deputy Mayor Robert K.
Steel said.

The initiative would, in some cases, allow developers to build towers twice the size now permitted in the Grand Central area. The
owner of the 19-story Roosevelt Hotel at Madison and 45th Street could
replace it with a 58-story tower under the proposed rules. Current
regulations permit no more than 30 floors.

When zoning changes increase the value of land, who should reap the benefit? The current landholder, or the community? What did the landholder do to earn that windfall? Do you think it comes out of thin air? Do you think it is paid him by other rich people?

Or do you recognize that it is part of the structure which enriches a few and impoverishes the many?

It is easy to fix this one. One just has to recognize the structure, and value the land correctly, and start collecting the lion's share of the land rent for the community. If it is more than NYC can put to use -- and it will be -- then apply the excess to reducing our federal taxes on productive effort. Use it to fund Social Security, or Medicare, or universal health insurance, or something else that will benefit the vast majority of us instead of an undeserving tiny privileged minority. Don't throw it in the ocean, and don't leave it in private pockets, be they American or not.

Collect the land rent. Repeat next year, and the next, and the next. Natural Public Revenue.

October 20, 2012

The common ownership of mines necessarily followed, with an
allotment of lands to anyone who wished to live by tilling the land;
but not a foot of the land was remitted to private hands for
purposes of selfish pleasure or the exclusion of any other from the
landscape.

October 16, 2012

His next task, and indeed the most hazardous he ever undertook, was
the making a new division of their lands. For there was an
extreme inequality among them, and their State was overloaded with a
multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole
wealth had centered upon a very few.

October 13, 2012

Billie: Because when ya steal from the government, you're stealing from yourself, ya dumb ass.

And when we allow others to steal from the commons what rightly belongs to the community, what are we? Some of that theft we all recognize as theft, and other kinds are perfectly legal, even honored, under our current laws. I find the latter even more troubling than the former.

And when neither our economists nor our leaders even SEE it, it is fair to call that a corruption of what their businesses are supposed to be.

October 11, 2012

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purpose.
The territory is a part of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed
upon them by the Creator of the Universe.

— WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Speech in the
United States Senate, March 11, 1850.

October 07, 2012

We now speak of property in land; and there is a difficulty in
explaining the origin of this property consistently with the law of
nature; for the land was once, no doubt, common; and the question
is, how any particular part of it could justly be taken out of the
common and so appropriated to the first owner as to give him a
better right to it than others; and what is more, a right to exclude
others from it. Moralists have given many different accounts of this
matter, which diversity alone, perhaps, is a proof that none of them
are satisfactory.

All that natural law does is to suggest the establishment of
property when the welfare of human society demands it, leaving it to
the wisdom of men to determine whether they should allow private
property in all things or only in some, and whether they should hold
those which they appropriate separately or in common, leaving the
rest to the first occupant, so that no one can assume the right to
enjoy them alone.

October 05, 2012

Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if
one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the
possession of an individual and may be held by him for his sole use
and benefit as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then
other portions of the earth's surface may be so held; and eventually
the whole of the earth's surface may be so held; and our planet may
thus lapse into private hands.

October 04, 2012

In the early ages of society it would have been impossible to
maintain the exclusive ownership of a few persons in what seems at
first sight an equal gift to all (the land) — a thing to which
everyone has the same claim.

October 03, 2012

Let us suppose that a people is excluded from the ownership of the
land. I say that this exclusion, even if followed by no other
injustice (which I think impossible), by making a man a stranger to
the commonwealth, makes him indifferent to the existence of the
State.

— MARMONTEL, Address in Favor of
the Peasants of the North (1757), Oeuvres, Vol X., p. 72.

October 02, 2012

That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet
"pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable
crime that could be committed. Each human being by mere birth
has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they
do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not
the "pauper," oh, inexpressibly wicked word! — it is the well-to-do
who are the criminal classes.

September 30, 2012

Any settlement of the land of a country that would exclude the
humblest man in that country from his share of the common
inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong to that man,
but moreover would be an impious resistance to the benevolent
intentions of the Creator.

Land is not, and cannot be, property in the sense in which movable
things are property. Every human being born into this planet
must live upon the land if he lives at all. He did not ask to
be born, and, being born, room must be found for him. The land in
any country is really the property of the nation which occupies it.

September 13, 2012

That which is yet wanting on your part to be done is this, to see
that the oppressor's power be cast out with his person; and to see
that the free possession of the land and liberties be put into the
hands of the oppressed commoners of England.

September 12, 2012

"But how is it that you allow these chiefs — landlords, don't you call them? — to taboo the
soil, and prevent you all from even walking on it? Don't you see
that if you choose to combine in a body, and insist upon the
recognition of your natural rights — if you determined to make the landlords give up
their taboo, and cease from injustice, they'd have to yield to you?
And then you could exercise your natural right of going where you
pleased, and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit,
instead of leaving it as now, to be cultivated anyhow, or turned
into waste, for the benefit of the tabooers?"

September 08, 2012

The nobility and gentry and even those holy men, the abbots, not
content with the old rents that their farms yielded, nor thinking it
enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public,
resolve to do it hurt instead of good. . . . As if
forest and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those
worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitude.

September 06, 2012

A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a
forest or hunting ground, and expel every human being who has lived
upon it. In a thickly populated country like England, where
almost every acre has its owner and occupier, this is a power of
legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power
should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a
degree, indicates that as regards true social science, we are still
in a state of barbarism.

September 04, 2012

The post below this one, "Mitt Romney's 'Fair Share' " refers to his fair share of the costs of providing public goods.

But perhaps an equally important question is the nature of one's fair share of the output of our economy and the output of the earth. Some of the former output is the result of individual efforts, and one ought to be able to keep that portion. But at the same time we must recognize how much comes from the division of labor, from drawing down on the non-infinite supply of non-renewable natural resources on which all of us today must depend and on which future generations of human beings must rely. Those who draw down more than their legitimate share owe something to the rest of the community. Our wealthiest tend, we suspect, to use many, many times their legitimate share, and the median American likely draws far more than their share, when one considers the planet as a whole.

Perhaps "legitimate" is not the right word here. It refers to what is permissible under current law. (The word gets misused a lot -- see the discussion on "legitimate rape," which seemed to be about the circumstances under which a woman has a right to make a specific very personal, decision, and when it is considered by some to not be left to her and is the province of government, legislators or others.)

What is one's "fair share" of natural resources? America is using a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources. Are we entitled to it because we're somehow "exceptional"? Because "our" God is somehow better than other nation's Gods? Or do we genuinely believe that all people are created equal, and intend to live our lives accordingly?

Our output of greenhouse gases exceeds our share of the world's population. This is not without consequences for the world, and for peace on earth.

We ought to be re-examining our incentives so that they move us in the direction we ought to be going, which is, to my mind, using less. We can build transportation infrastructure which will permit many more of us to move around with less impact on the environment. We can fund that through collecting the increases in land value that infrastructure creates. We can correct the incentives which cause us to use today's inferior technologies to extract natural resources from the earth in ways which damage the environment, as if ours was the final generation, or the only one worth serious consideration.

Better incentives could reduce, eliminate, even reverse urban sprawl. I refer specifically to land value taxation as a replacement for the existing property tax, particularly in places where assessments are for one reason or another not consistent with current property values -- e.g., California and Florida, parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania which currently use assessments from the 1970s, and many other places where assessments are simply out of whack with current reality!) We should be replacing sales taxes, wage taxes, building taxes with taxes on land value and on natural resources. Most of that value is flowing generously into private or corporate pockets, to our detriment. It concentrates wealth, income, and, of course, political power.

Collecting the rent, instead of leaving the lion's share of it to be pocketed by the rent-seekers, would go a long way to making our society and our economy healthier. Eliminating the privilege of privatizing that which in a wisely designed society would be our common treasure would make our society a better place in which to live, a place in which all could thrive and prosper without victimizing their fellow human beings.

A major theme of the underlying political debate in the United States is the role of the state and the need for collective action. The private sector, while central in a modern economy, cannot ensure its success alone. For example, the financial crisis that began in 2008 demonstrated the need for adequate regulation.

Moreover, beyond effective regulation (including ensuring a level playing field for competition), modern economies are founded on technological innovation, which in turn presupposes basic research funded by government. This is an example of a public good – things from which we all benefit, but that would be undersupplied (or not supplied at all) were we to rely on the private sector.

Conservative politicians in the US underestimate the importance of publicly provided education, technology, and infrastructure. Economies in which government provides these public goods perform far better than those in which it does not.

But public goods must be paid for, and it is imperative that everyone pays their fair share. While there may be disagreement about what that entails, those at the top of the income distribution who pay 15% of their reported income (money accruing in tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens may not be reported to US authorities) clearly are not paying their fair share. ...

I have to disagree with the second sentence of this next paragraph. And I think Stiglitz knows better, if he stops to think about it:

Democracies rely on a spirit of trust and cooperation in paying taxes. If every individual devoted as much energy and resources as the rich do to avoiding their fair share of taxes, the tax system either would collapse, or would have to be replaced by a far more intrusive and coercive scheme. Both alternatives are unacceptable.

We don't need intrusive or coercive; we just need to start collecting the lion's share of the rent! Well, I suppose some rent-seekers would find this extremely intrusive -- it intrudes on their habit of self-enrichment by privatizing of what is rightly and logically our PUBLIC treasure, the logical way of financing PUBLIC goods. And Professor Stiglitz is quite aware of the value of natural resources; he may not be quite as conscious of the value of urban and other well-situated land.

Our national recordkeeping doesn't even collect the valuations of land and natural resources on any consistent basis! (One could reasonably argue that this failure-to-measure is a form of corruption!) What we don't measure we can't do anything about. And the powers that be are quite content with how we do things; the benefits accrue to them! And several generations of college-educated people know nothing about the issue, which was well known and widely discussed 100 years ago. (Look into the extensive Single Tax literature and the ideas of Henry George.)

Some more excerpts:

The billionaire investor Warren Buffett argues that he should pay only the taxes that he must, but that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that taxes his income at a lower rate than his secretary is required to pay. He is right. Romney might be forgiven were he to take a similar position. Indeed, it might be a Nixon-in-China moment: a wealthy politician at the pinnacle of power advocating higher taxes for the rich could change the course of history.

But Romney has not chosen to do so. He evidently does not recognize that a system that taxes speculation at a lower rate than hard work distorts the economy. Indeed, much of the money that accrues to those at the top is what economists call rents, which arise not from increasing the size of the economic pie, but from grabbing a larger slice of the existing pie.

Those at the top include a disproportionate number of monopolists who increase their income by restricting production and engaging in anti-competitive practices; CEOs who exploit deficiencies in corporate-governance laws to grab a larger share of corporate revenues for themselves (leaving less for workers); and bankers who have engaged in predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices (often targeting poor and middle-class households). It is perhaps no accident that rent-seeking and inequality have increased as top tax rates have fallen, regulations have been eviscerated, and enforcement of existing rules has been weakened: the opportunity and returns from rent-seeking have increased.

Today, a deficiency of aggregate demand afflicts almost all advanced countries, leading to high unemployment, lower wages, greater inequality, and – coming full, vicious circle – constrained consumption. There is now a growing recognition of the link between inequality and economic instability and weakness.

There is another vicious circle: Economic inequality translates into political inequality, which in turn reinforces the former, including through a tax system that allows people like Romney – who insists that he has been subject to an income-tax rate of “at least 13%” for the last ten years – not to pay their fair share. The resulting economic inequality – a result of politics as much as market forces – contributes to today’s overall economic weakness.

For they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder
others from possessing a part of the soil, of which they make no
use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated; since every
man has by the law of Nature a right to such waste portion of the
earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

September 02, 2012

The vacant land belongs to the landless. The simple fact that
the one is vacant and the other landless is of itself the highest
proof that they should be allowed to come together. Alas, what
a crime against nature that they should be kept apart.

August 15, 2012

It was in vain anyone repeated, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you the boundaries? it might be objected, and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we did not require of you? Are you ignorant that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving for want of what you possess in superfluity?

— J. J. ROUSSEAU, Essay on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, Part II., p. 20.

August 14, 2012

We occupy an island, on which we live by the fruits of our labor; a shipwrecked sailor is cast up on it; what is his right? May he say: "I, too, am a man; I, too, have a natural right to cultivate the soil. I may, therefore, on the same title as you, occupy a corner of the land to support myself by my labor?"

If you know how to defend your rights, if you accomplish your duty,
this frightful disorder will cease, the human race, lifted up after
its long downfall, will no longer be the property of a few tyrants,
neither will the earth be their exclusive heritage. All will
share in the good things destined by Providence for all.

August 13, 2012

Then he says: "If I am born into the earth, where is my part? Have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin."

"Touch any wood or field or house-lot on your peril," cry all the gentlemen of this world; "but you may come and work in ours for us, and we will give you a piece of bread."

August 10, 2012

In love of home the love of country has its rise, and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need — those who venerate the land, owning its woods and streams and earth and all that they produce, or those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain?

August 04, 2012

The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which when land was in common, cost the laborer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the license to gather them, and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labor either collects or produces. This portion, or what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of the land.

July 07, 2012

The social problem of the future we consider to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor.